North Dakota Guard Joins Patrol For Drill At Capitol In Bismarck

Remain calm, it's only a drill. North Dakota National Guard and Highway Patrol to exercise at Governor's mansion.

The National Guard 81st Civil Support Team has 22 full-time Army and Air Force National Guard members and is tasked with providing support for civil authorities at domestic incident sites.

Trying to figure out a potentially explosive situation? You call the 81st.

Why? Because, detecting and identifying biological, radiological, chemical, nuclear, and high yield explosives is all part of their training.

North Dakota National Guard press release from this afternoon breaks down Wednesday's action.

WHO: North Dakota National Guard (81^st Civil Support Team) 

North Dakota Highway Patrol

North Dakota Department of Health  

WHAT: Joint exercise

WHEN: Beginning at 9:30 a.m, Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2021

             Best times for media are 10:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m

WHERE: N.D. state capitol grounds and N.D. Department of Health state laboratory 

The exercise will be on the move throughout the morning.

The scenario starts with the North Dakota Highway Patrol requesting assistance from the 81st Civil Support Team to identify a suspicious package. It starts in the neighborhood of the Governors front office at the Capitol building.

Later in the morning, the teams will move to the North Dakota Department of Health state laboratory.

So it starts around 8:30 AM and will end around Noon.

So if you see something when you're driving past the capitol grounds on Wednesday morning you now know what's going on.  You can also put an educated stop to some social media thread tomorrow before it becomes a dumpster fire...good luck with that.